The implementation of a marketing plan - Case Study Example

Tutti Matti Affiliation Executive Summary The outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in Toronto is just but a temporary pandemic. Although the economy is experiencing a downturn, a strong rebound from customers and tourists, and a better market performance is expected the moment the virus will be contained (Ian da silva, 2006). During this period when Toronto is experiencing tough economic conditions due to the outbreak, TUTTI MATTI ought to focus on capitalizing on such an opportunity. This can be accomplished through a number of marketing strategies. These marketing strategies will see an increase in the customer base at Tutti Matti. As such, the strategy will enable TUTTI MATTI beat some of her competitors who constantly threaten her business. One of the strategies that should be used is the provision of discounts or coupons with the purchase of movie tickets. Tutti Matti should also focus on providing discounts on particular days, such as Monday and Tuesday. Delivery services to people working around the area can also be of great benefit. The restaurant should also offer roof top event during summer time as well as participate at the Summerlicious. In addition, they should take advantage of free internet advertising platforms such as Facebook or the use of blogs. Further, the Toronto life magazine could be used as a great as a promotion tool. Tutti Matti should not charge corkage fee. Solomon should also actively participate in food competitions and other charity events so as to gain a reputation. Solomon’s main focus should be attracting new customers and increasing her customer base. She, therefore, needs to undertake a lot of promotional activities while providing the best pricing for her customers. Maintaining a strong customer base will play a big role in eliminating the effect of the economy downturn. Introduction A marketing plan provides a clarification of marketing elements of a business entity. It also maps out the objectives, the directions as well as the activities for a business and its work force. A marketing plan normally focuses on issues that are related to price, product, place and promotion. It helps in creating a pricing strategy for products, advertising or promotional strategies, the distribution of products as well as the ‘hook’ of products or services and the competitive edge (Keller, 1993). As such, the paper will evaluate and offer a marketing plan for TUTTI MATTI backed by facts. The market Challenges facing Tutti Matti Alida Solomon is the owner of a traditional Italian Tuscan restaurant known as Tutti Matti. She opened this restaurant in Downtown Toronto, Canada after spending 6 years in Tuscany, Italy learning and familiarizing herself with all aspects of a restaurant’s operation. Tutti Matti is facing a challenge due to the outbreak of SARS in the year 2003. Well, one of the cities that was most affected by the virus was Toronto. Because of this, the World Health Organization went ahead and issued a warning against all but essential travel to Toronto in the month of April. This led to a reduced performance of the city’s tourism industry. As a result, the city lost up to $39 million revenue in that particular month (Ian da silva, 2006). As a new restaurant, Tutti Matti does not have a dependable media acclaim and recurrent or repeat customer base. Solomon, thus, needs a marketing plan that will work effectively in attracting more customers, and advertising more as the effects of SARS fade. An advertising strategy will work out very well for Tutti Matti. Another issue that Solomon needs to address is how to remain profitable so that she can be in a position to pay off her initial investment of $380,000 (Ian da silva, 2006). Solomon will not be able to pay off her coming loan’s interest if her restaurant’s sale decreases as a result of the economy downturn. To better promote Tutti Matti and manage to attract more customers, the present marketing strategy and returning diners cannot guarantee long term profitability. Devoid of a direct way to communicate with the target market, the restaurant cannot survive in the long run. Tutti Matti also needs to discover ways of competing with her competitors such as Terroni and Alice Fazooli’s. Both of the Tutti Matti’s major competitors possess a great public reputation as well as a royalty customer base. In addition, they are situated in a popular area that is quite close to Tutti Matti. It is quite evident that Tutti Matti has a minimal competitive edge over her competitors, especially when it comes to location and reputation, Internal Analysis Finance wise, Tutti Matti was started with a cost of $380,000. Solomon realized a total of $210,000 on sales within the first six months, which is quite decent for a new restaurant. With 90 percent of the orders in wine purchases taking place during dinner time, Solomon could reach a gross sales total of $500,000 at the end of the year, if at all she increases sales in beverage or if she increases the price of wines. In weekly sales, Monday and Tuesday contributed to the smallest percentage of sales i.e. only 20 percent of total weekly sales (Ian da silva, 2006). Tutti Matti employed five individuals. Three of them were bar/serving staff and two of them were kitchen employees. The staff members were paid for 12 hours of work on weekdays and seven hours on Saturdays. External analysis Competition: Tutti Matti faced competition from over 200 Italian restaurants that were located in Toronto. These competitors usually ran national advertising and have establishments in multiple locations. Due to the intense competition, the main challenge that Solomon faced was attracting new competitors and converting them to repeat diners. Some, like Alice Fazooli’s had website that provided information on their menu and their locations. Alice Fazooli’s was quite popular and had recently won an award. Terroni also had a website and offered pre-theater meals, but with minimal advertising (Ian da silva, 2006). Customers: Each meal consisted of a certain age group of customers. The Lunch time Crowd, mostly consisted of young professionals who were employees in various professional service firms close to Tutti Matti. Most of these were repeat diners. They preferred reasonably priced foods. Dinner time customers were those on a relaxed schedule. A great percentage of them took alcoholic drinks. Corporate gatherings were also hosted (Ian da silva, 2006). Marketing Strategies One other strategy that the restaurant can bank on is offering roof top events during summer time as well as participating at the Summerlicious. The Summerlicious festival gave Tutti Matti a great opportunity to let new customers explore the various Italian cuisines that Tutti Matti had to offer. This meant that customers would get the chance to learn about the new joint that Solomon had started, as well as have a taste of probably better meals that the ones they had been taking from the other restaurants in Toronto. Roof top events during summer time will also let customers explore and learn more. The possibility of the Bring Your Own Wine (BYOW) legislation being passed meant that diners could now go to Toronto restaurants with their own bottled wines and take any unfinished home. These customers would in turn be charged corkage fee, to be determined independently by each of the restaurants. To maximize on this legislation, Solomon should have chosen to charge a minimal amount of corkage fee, or no corkage fee at all. Since no incremental costs were incurred with the BYOW concept, charging no fee would have attracted more customers to Tutti Matti, which meant increased profits in other forms of sales other than drinks. The no corkage fee strategy would also help in building customer loyalty with the increased customer base. The Toronto life magazine, which is a monthly publication could be used as a great as a promotion tool. This magazine was purchased by businesses as well as individuals. Each year, the magazine would publish a ‘Where to eat’ issue. This issue featured Toronto’s new and upcoming restaurants and restaurateurs’ reviews. This issue provided Solomon one of the most reliable ways of advertising and creating awareness to businesses and individuals of her newly started restaurant, Tutti Matti. This would, however, cost her up to $1000 to acquire a business card sized advertisement. Solomon could also take advantage of the Dining out Magazine. Each of these magazine publications featured a particular city, and focused on restaurant editorials. A one page layout could be a great choice for promoting the restaurant. The layout would feature a brief history of the restaurant accompanied by photos of selected menu items as well as the interior of the restaurant. Each copy of the produced thirty thousand copies is said to have been viewed by an average of two people. If her restaurant could be featured on the top page of the publication, then this would give it a greater visibility compared to other features contained in the publication. Tutti Matti can also concentrate on brand improvement and experience. Brand refers to logo, service or product or advertisement. Brand is a promise that exists between business and its customers. It usually sums up the earlier experience goals of noble reputation and the virtue of reputation of their clients. The experience of a customer is actually the brand experience. Tutti Matti can work towards delivering differentiate service. This is a great step towards building a long term viable relationship. Tutti Matti can succeed in building a good relationship with her customers’ relationship by engaging individual customers particularly in narrow segments, by engaging in two-way communications. This will build long-term relationships by promoting the restaurant’s products, and the diners will most likely value these products at any given time. A significant aspect for Tutti Matti relates to the businesses product positioning. Tutti Matti should adopt a differentiated pricing strategy. This can be done by adjusting the pricing of food and drinks based on various circumstances. Tutti Matti can choose to vary prices and offer discounts for a particular group of people, for instance, they can offer discounts, coupons or rebates for purchases made by a family or purchases made by students (Nagle & Holden, 2013). Discounts can also be provided on particular days, i.e. Monday and Tuesday for these are the days during which sales are really low. Delivery services to people working around the area can also be of great benefit. People will be more willing to make purchases if at all they are assured of delivery of the products they purchase. This can contribute greatly to attainment of market competitiveness. In addition, the restaurant can also focus on differentiating their products in terms of quality. The foods and drinks could reflect a special trait that ensures better customer satisfaction in return for a higher price that the customer pays. The consumers can also be allowed to choose their own pricing, a way of innovating, as well as a perfect price strategy (Nagle & Holden, 2013). The internet is ubiquitous. Almost everyone is in possession of devices that can provide access to the internet. In addition, the use of social media platforms, especially for marketing purpose has gained popularity worldwide. These platforms include Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram. It is therefore upon Solomon to take advantage of these free internet advertising platforms such as Facebook or the use of blogs. The effective use of these platforms can assist in creating awareness and providing necessary information to social media users both in Toronto and away from Toronto. This will all take place at almost zero cost, for she will only need to pay a professional to facilitate social media campaigns, of which she can decide to facilitate without needing any help (Heymann-Reder, 2012). Solomon should also actively participate in food competitions and charity events so as to gain a reputation. She should try her best to take part in food event sponsorships and other Corporate Social Responsibility events at the city level, and if budget allows, at national level too. Sponsoring events will enhance Tutti Matti’s corporate image, and will also attract customers from the corporate world. Sponsoring of charity events is a great way for Tutti Matti to give back to the society. Most of Tutti Matti’s competitors are in possession of websites which are quite effective in promotion and awareness creation. For instance, Alice Fazooli’s website contains information on their menus as well as contact information. The launch of a Website for Tutti Matti would be such a great advertising and promotional step. Many customers will regard a business much higher if the business has a website (Roddewig, 2013). The website should be enhanced so as not to just include information about the restaurant’s menu items and location /contact information, but should also enhance interactive marketing and facilitate a two way communication with diners or clients. For instance, the website can provide links to the restaurants Social media accounts, SMSs, interactive chatting services and client alerts via emails. The presence of links within a website normally plays a big role in enhancing a remarkable online experience for customers. The website development should be strategic, for instance, the use of color should correspond to the restaurant’s branding colors. Interactive marketing can be accomplished via SMS, Email, Facebook alerts optimization and standardization of optimizations. This can also be accomplished through the standardization of websites. Once the restaurant establishes a good relationship with a great number of customers, they can use email marketing to increase their communication between these customers. The restaurant can develop an email and text messaging subscriber base. They can also introduce competition characterized by attractive prizes on social media targeting the various age groups and income groups (Heymann-Reder, 2012). Solomon can work towards an excellent and a better customer experience each day. The restaurants outlook can be improved. Diners are always looking for excellent ambience and a great customer service. Solomon should always work towards this, depending on the class of diners who visit the place at various times of the day. She should also work towards expanding the business and exploring other strategic locations that will be easily accessible and pleasing to diners. One other strategy that Solomon could use is the provision of discounts or coupons (Sloane, 1999) with every purchase of movie tickets that customers make. This is because most of the diners who visited the restaurant were most often on their way to the movies (i.e. the Dinner Crowd). The restaurant can also bank on word of mouth marketing. They can focus on inviting famous persons, especially with the many events they hold, as a way of attracting new customers. Conclusion The outbreak of SARS presented a great challenge to Alida’s young business. Taking into consideration the intense competition and the falling economy, she needed to devise ways of increasing the customer base in Tutti Matti Italian Restaurant. Some of these promotional activities include the implementation and use of website and email marketing, issuance of discounts and coupons based on age groups of customers and also on specific days, improved customer experience, as well as creation of brand awareness (Ian da silva, 2006). The implementation of a marketing plan requires the cooperation of all staff members. References Heymann-Reder, D. (2012). Social Media Marketing. Addison-Wesley Verlag. Ian da silva. (2006). Tutti Matti .Marketting Mangement Report. Ivey management services. Keller, K. L. (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. The Journal of Marketing, 1-22. Nagle, T. T., & Holden, R. K. (2013). Strategy and tactics of pricing. Pearson Education Limited. Roddewig, S. (2003). Website Marketing. Braunschweig/Wiesbaden. Sloane, M. A. (1999). U.S. Patent No. 5,918,211. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Exhibit 1 Exhibit 2 Read More